This invention relates to a child resistant container and safety closure which furthers the "state of the art" of my child proof container and safety closures disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,027,954 and 5,058,754 issued on Jul. 2, 1991 and Oct. 22, 1991, respectively.
A variety of child resistant safety closures have been designed and marketed which are intended to prevent yound children from opening containers of fluid, semi-fluid and solid medicine and other potentially dangerous products. Most of these safety closures prevent accidental opening by children in accordance with their design features, but have a common problem of being difficult for adults to open, particularly the elderly and people who are physically handicapped.
For example, many child resistant container systems for aspirin and other medicines utilize arrows or other marks on the closure and container which must be aligned before the closure can be pryed off. These systems appear to work well to prevent accidental opening by children but are not considered to be adult easy, since the alignment marks are hard to see and/or feel, the closure is very tight on the container and difficult to rotate to the exact alignment point, and is also hard to pry off even after proper alignment. The push down and twist safety closure systems now on the market, also are apparently good to prevent opening by children but because of the relatively high push and twist forces needed for opening, are not considered adult easy and are a real problem for the elderly and the handicapped. The above and other child resistant closure systems, which by design require relatively high forces in one direction or another, are difficult for adults to open. Because of this, and increasing number of adults purposely leave the closure off or loose on the container once it has been opened, to avoid the annoyance of having the same problem to re-open it every time they want to use the contents. this procedure is considered dangerous to children, as it defeats the purpose of child resistant container systems. Providing reliable seals for sealing containers of hazardous liquid fluids has also been a concern for designers of child resistant container systems.